Unlocking Potential and Transforming Lives

Punjabi Junction ~ Social Enterprise Café

We are immensely proud of our community Café, Punjabi Junction. Based on Edinburgh’s longest street, Leith Walk. It has become the heart of the organisation.
Many local people and businesses drop by the café regularly to pick up a curry, request outside catering for events, to sit and enjoy the atmosphere, or even join us for some cookery classes, which have proved to be a massive success!

Founded in 2010, the café has provided traditional Punjabi home cooked cuisine to the people of Edinburgh, whilst also giving Minority Ethnic (ME) women training and employment opportunities. The women who work at Punjabi Junction, learn valuable social and practical skills that can be applied in any workplace. Covering literacy, numeracy, communication, social and customer care skills, the training the women are given covers a lot of bases whilst working with the public reinforces social inclusion.

Our cookery classes have been a great way to welcome the community and give them a taste of Punjabi culture. People from all ethnicities and backgrounds come into the café and spend time learning about the spices and methods used to make delicious hearty food. This part of the enterprise is brilliant for us, as the women are integrating with people from all cultures. Being able to pass on their knowledge of cooking, gives a great sense of self worth.

The outside catering has proved to be a huge success. We regularly take bookings from large corporate conferences, to weddings, and festivals. Most notable for us is the Edinburgh Mela, Scotland’s biggest and best festival of world music and dance. We have provided catering to them every year since Punjabi Junction was founded, and it is a real honour for us to be a part of such a

culturally aware festival. Although fundamentally the basis of our menu is Punjabi cuisine, for outside catering we also offer European dishes. Curry Friday at Punjabi Junction offers our amazing curry delivery service to office workers in the city who are looking to end their working week with a punch!

25th July 2013 our Social Enterprise Cafe, previously known as Punjab’n De Rasoi was re-launched with new branding and a new name – Punjabi Junction! The layout was changed to maximise seating and to facilitate good customer service, we’ve got a great mural on the wall showing the spice trail of India and the spices we use in our cooking. We had steadily been gaining momentum with the various services we offered and seen an increase in the amount of visitors we were getting into the café. The café was styled to recreate the feeling of an old Indian Train. That along with the new name ‘Punjabi Junction’ has helped to earn our place as a respected and authentic business within the community.